Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health

Mental health is a political issue, even though we often discuss it as a personal one. So how is the current mental health crisis connected to capitalism, racism and other social issues? And in a different world, how might we transform the ways that we think about mental health, diagnosis and treatment?

These are some of the big questions Micha Frazer-Carroll asks in her new book, Mad World, as she presents mental health as an urgent political concern that needs a deeper understanding, beyond the scope of today's 'awareness-raising' campaigns.

Micha joins us on the show for a conversation around the themes of the book. We talk about the history of asylums and psychiatry, the connections with disability justice and neurodiversity movements, art and imagination, abolition, policing, diagnosis and knowledge production.

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Micha Frazer-Carroll is a columnist at the Independent. She has previously edited for gal-dem, the Guardian and Blueprint, a mental health magazine that she founded. Micha has also written for Vogue, HuffPost, Huck and Dazed. She was nominated for the Comment Awards’ Fresh New Voice of the Year Award, and the Observer/Anthony Burgess Award for Arts Criticism. She is invested in using journalism to challenge systems of power.